I Won't Decorate My Love

If your love is a performance, it isn't love.

Joanna channels the feelings of all sustainability professionals.

Back in the presidential campaign of 2008, there was a whole kerfuffle about American flag lapel pins. Then-candidate Barak Obama didn’t wear one, which made some question his patriotism. He started wearing an American flag lapel pin and the controversy died down.

I thought I remembered his opponent, John McCain, derogatorily referring to some politicians as “lapel pin patriots” for wearing lapel pins to signal patriotism while failing to act like any kind of patriot. I couldn’t find a reference to such a quote, so maybe I remember it wrong. But it sounds like the kind of thing McCain, a veteran who spent years as a POW, would say about some of his peers whom he did not hold in high regard.

I find the lapel pin thing both amusing and sad.

I’m sure some current members of Congress don’t wear the little American flag lapel pin, but I haven’t seen them lately. Wearing the American flag lapel pin isn’t an act of patriotism, it is a cynical performative act with no substance behind the act. They are taking action because someone will whine if they don’t wear the pin. But a little piece of metal and enamel pinned to your chest isn’t an action, it’s a uniform meant to alleviate someone else’s petty insecurities. Not a good look.

For those of you who aren’t from the US, I assure you, the number of people who wear the American flag lapel pin in their day-to-day lives is approximately zero. If I see someone out in the wild with an American flag lapel pin, I think that they might genuinely be patriotic. They aren’t putting on a uniform for anyone else. Good for them.

Sustainability pieces of flair.

A similar thing is happening in the world of sustainability. You can say that all we are doing is painting the house while it is burning, or fiddling while Rome burns, or any other fire-related metaphor to highlight that we aren’t doing nearly enough while the world is on fire. Yes, that’s true, but there is something else going on as well.

The insanely inadequate actions of governments, companies, investors, and society as a whole amount to the sustainability pieces of flair that Joanna (played by Jennifer Aniston) got sick of and quit her job at Tchotchkes, in the 1999 movie Office Space. Hence the header image.

So much of the sustainability dance, from Net Zero pledges to Carbon Offsets, to disclosure regulations that have been argued over for years and adopted to great fanfare, don’t adequately address the problem. They aren’t meant to. They are meant to draw your attention and to show that something is being done when it is not.

These actions are meant to show that the person making that net zero promise, or buying that carbon offset, cares. When all they care about is “being seen doing something”. They are the equivalent of the lapel pin patriots of 2008, and the lapel pin patriots of today. They are the equivalent of Brian, the other waiter at Tchotchkes who had 37 pieces of flair on his uniform. Joanna was given shit by her boss because she only had 15 pieces of flair. Her empty gesture of forced whimsey wasn’t flashy enough for corporate.

We just got done with another COP conference, where a petrostate made a big show of doing not very much to stop a climate change-induced apocalypse. But they put on a big show! Substance was not the point. It hasn’t been so at COP for 29 meetings.

If your sustainability job comes from the marketing budget, you’re doing it wrong.

I know a lot of people in the sustainability world who joined the good fight at companies, investment firms, and government agencies to make a difference. Not all of them are depressed and disillusioned, but plenty of them are. They took those positions because they saw the dire need for action to save their futures and the futures of their children. Most of them today are disappointed. I hear all the time from them that they are starting to realize that the places where they work will not, cannot make the change needed.

Those working in the trenches to save the planet, their children, and their fellow man are often overworked, understaffed, ignored, and in one example from a friend of mine, just another line item in the marketing budget. Their work in sustainability comes out of the marketing budget.

I don’t want to tell anyone what to do, but I know so many people in a similar situation. If you are trying to make the world better, you can’t do that at a place that isn’t interested in that and treats your position as the equivalent of an American flag lapel pin on the chest of a politician. If you are just a shiny object meant to virtue signal, it isn’t going to get better.

You are not a piece of flair. Get out of a place that treats you like one and find a place where you can make a difference, or make one yourself.

That’s one of the things I’m working on outside of this little blog space. But that is an essay for another day.

Making 90s references in your blog just means you are old.

For those of you who want a little inspiration, here is the scene from Office Space to inspire you. Office Space (5/5) Movie CLIP - Joanna Quits With Flair (1999) HD. You don’t have to give your boss the finger, but if all you are is a piece of flair, get the hell out of there.

Thank you to Liz Phair for the great lyric “I won’t decorate my love” from her song Nashville. Check it out. Much like the clip from Office Space, it came out in the 90s. In addition to being a great lyric, in a great song, from a great artist, it is a good guiding principle I try to live by. Thanks Liz.